The Veronis Suhler Stevenson Investment Considerations for the Communications Industry (ICCI) is a comprehensive review of key data, trends and drivers impacting the media industry for the past 30 years. Results from the 2004 ICCI indicate that the communications industry has enjoyed steady and impressive growth for the past 25 years, consistently surpassing broader economic growth and outperforming most other U.S. industries. Aside from short-lived setbacks during several periods of economic recession, the communications industry has achieved strong annual revenue and profit growth for most of the 1977-2002 period.

Several key trends have driven the communications business for the past quarter-century, including technological advances, consolidation, and deregulation. Technological advances have significantly impacted the communications market by leading to the development of new media, which has increased overall media usage and advertising spending. Consolidation and deregulation have afforded media companies scale economies, allowing them to generate consistently higher profit margins for the last 25 years.

The ICCI identifies and analyzes key traits of the four main sectors of the communications industry: advertising, specialty media and marketing services, consumer end user, and institutional end user. The report examines historical and forecast spending data, and compares the financial performance of leading publicly reporting media companies against the S&P 500. In addition, the ICCI includes relevant analytics that evaluate the communication industry’s performance during economic slowdowns and recoveries.

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